The gloomy and repulsive night when the female president of the 7th largest economy in the world was the prey of choice fed to a lynch mob of hyenas in a drab, provincial Circus Maximus will forever live in infamy.
By 367 votes for and 137 against, the impeachment/coup/regime change-light drive against Dilma Rousseff cleared the Brazilian Congressional circus and will now go to the Senate, where a “special commission” will be set up. If approved, Rousseff will then be sidelined for 180 days and a low-rent tropical Brutus, Vice-President Michel Temer, will ascend to power until the Senate’s final verdict.

This lowly farce should serve as a wake-up call not only to the BRICS but to the whole Global South. Who needs NATO, R2P (“responsibility to protect”) or “moderate rebels” when you can get your regime change just by tweaking a nation’s political/judicial system?

The Brazilian Supreme Court has not analyzed the merit of the matter – at least not yet. There’s no solid evidence anywhere Rousseff committed a “crime of responsibility”; she did what every American President since Reagan has done – not to mention leaders all across the world: along with her vice-president, the lowly Brutus, Rousseff got slightly creative with the federal budget’s numbers.

The coup has been sponsored by a certified crook, president of the lower house Eduardo Cunha; reportedly the holder of several illegal accounts in Switzerland, listed in the Panama Papers and under investigation by the Supreme Court. Instead of lording over near-illiterate hyenas in a racist, largely crypto-fascist circus, he should be behind bars. It beggars belief that the Supreme Court has not launched legal action against Cunha. The secret of his power over the circus is a gigantic corruption scheme lasting many years, featuring corporations contributing to his and others’ campaign financing.

And that’s the beauty of a regime change-light/color revolution of Hybrid War when staged in such a dynamically creative nation such as Brazil. The hall of mirrors yields a political simulacrum that would have driven deconstructionists Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco, if alive, green with envy; a Congress crammed with fools/patsies/traitors/crooks, some of whom are already being investigated for corruption, has conspired to depose a president who is not under any formal corruption investigation – and has not committed any “crime of responsibility”.

The neoliberal restoration
Still, without a popular vote, the massively rejected tropical Brutus twins, Temer and Cunha, will find it impossible to govern, even though they would perfectly incarnate the project of the immensely arrogant and ignorant Brazilian elites; a neoliberal triumph, with Brazilian “democracy” trampled down six feet under.

It’s impossible to understand what happened at the Circus Maximus this Sunday without knowing there’s a gaggle of Brazilian political parties that are seriously threatened by the non-stop overspill of the Car Wash corruption investigation. To ensure their survival, Car Wash must be “suspended”; and it will, under the bogus “national unity” proposed by lowly Brutus Temer.

But first, Car Wash must produce a high-profile scalp. And that has to be Lula in jail – compared to which the crucifixion of Rousseff is an Aesop fable. Corporate media, led by the noxious Globo empire, would hail it as the ultimate victory, and nobody would care about Car Wash’s enforced retirement.

In a nutshell, the ultimate aim is to perfectly “align” the Brazilian Executive, Legislative, Judiciary and corporate media interests. Democracy is for suckers. Brazilian elites remote controlling the hyenas know very well that if Lula runs again in 2018, he will win. And Lula has already warned; he won’t buy any “national unity” nonsense; he’ll be back in the streets fighting whatever illegitimate government pops up.

We’re now open for plundering
As it stands, Rousseff runs the risk of becoming the first major casualty of the NSA-originated, two-year-long Car Wash investigation. The President, admittedly an incompetent economic manager and lacking the right stuff of a master politician, believed that Car Wash – which practically prevented her from governing – would not reach her because she is personally honest. Yet Car Wash’s not so hidden agenda was always regime change. Who cares if in the process the nation is left on the verge of being controlled exactly by many of those indicted by the anti-corruption drive?

Lowly Brutus Temer – a vanity case version of Argentina’s Macri - is the perfect conduit for the implementation of regime change. He represents the powerful banking lobby, the powerful agribusiness lobby and the powerful federation of industries in Brazil’s economic leader, the state of Sao Paulo.

In a message to the nation, Brutus Temer admitted as much; “hope” after impeachment will be absolutely swell for “foreign investment”, as in let them plunder the colony at will; back to the trademark history of Brazil since 1500.

So Wall Street, US Big Oil and the proverbial “American interests” win this round at the circus – thanks to the, once again proverbial, vassal/comprador elites. Chevron execs are already salivating with the prospect of laying their hands on the pre-salt oil deposits; that was already promised by a trusted vassal in the Brazilian opposition.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff says she is aghast that the country’s political climate has deteriorated to the point that members of Congress can openly praise torturers and dictatorship, and she says her opponents are waging a campaign to seize power without facing voters at the polls, one she vows will not succeed.

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff: 'It is a coup' (Reuters)
“The impeachment process is an attempt to indirectly elect a group that otherwise wouldn’t have access [to power],” she said in a wide-ranging address to foreign reporters in the capital on Tuesday. “It’s a coup. You don’t need arms for it to be a coup.”

Ms. Rousseff faces impeachment on charges of having masked a gaping hole in the federal budget by borrowing from state banks, in violation of a fiscal-responsibility law. She reiterated Tuesday that she did nothing previous governments did not routinely do, and said the instrument of impeachment is being misused by an opposition that never accepted a narrow election loss in late 2014.

There is also a significant streak of misogyny in the attempt to unseat her, added Ms. Rousseff, the country’s first female president. In the overwhelmingly male Congress, members voting to impeach her Sunday held signs reading “See ya, sweetie.”

“There are attitudes toward me that wouldn’t exist with a male president,” she said, citing what she called sexist stereotypes that the Brazilian media have been ascribing to her. “They can’t accept that I’m not nervous, hysterical or unhinged.

“I’m not prone to despair, I’m not prone to not have the capacity to fight for my convictions. I fought for them my whole life,” Ms. Rousseff added. “I regret profoundly the great prejudice against women, the fact that women have to be fragile, or have to be seen as fragile. Brazilian women are anything but fragile.”

The lower house voted to send the question of Ms. Rousseff’s impeachment to the Senate for trial, something more than half of Brazilians have said in surveys should happen, because they hold her responsible for a massive graft scandal that has revolted a public struggling with inflation and unemployment rates over 10 per cent.

As Congress members lined up one by one to vote during the raucous eight-hour session, many cited a reason (God, the people, their mothers, defence of Christianity) for their choice.

Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right member who represents Rio de Janeiro, dedicated his vote to Carlos Brilhante Ustra, a colonel who headed an infamous torture operation during the dictatorship. Mr. Bolsonaro invoked the colonel as “the source of Dilma Rousseff’s dread.”

Ms. Rousseff, 68, was a Marxist guerrilla during the dictatorship. She was caught by security forces in 1970, held for three years and tortured at the cell that Col. Ustra oversaw. While she rarely speaks of this period, years ago she told a researcher about being beaten and electrocuted, and of the terror being kept naked on the floor of a freezing-cold cell.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo, who is also a Congressman, chose to dedicate his vote to the military leaders who carried out the 1964 coup. The Bolsonaros’ comments evoked disgust in some quarters in Brazil, but admiration in others. According to a survey conducted earlier this month by the polling company Datafolha, Jair Bolsonaro is the top choice to be president among the wealthiest 5 per cent of voters, with 23 per cent of that segment saying they would vote for him.

Ms. Rousseff’s voice was raw as she talked about hearing her torturer praised and her suffering mocked, on the floor of the house.

“I regret that this moment in Brazil has provided an opening to intolerance, to hatred, to this kind of talk,” she said. “In a [country] like ours, where democracy is the result of a great fight, of resistance, that enlisted a wide range of sectors, it’s terrible to see someone voting in tribute to the greatest torturer that this country has known.

“I was arrested in the 1970s and, in fact, I knew this man he is referring to well.”

The newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo reported on Tuesday that senior political aides who were with Ms. Rousseff while she watched the broadcast of the vote say that when she heard the torturer praised she gripped the arms of her chair, got up and silently left the room.

Others who voted for the President’s impeachment expressed their desire to salvage the country’s economy: It shrank by 3.8 per cent last year and is expected to contract further this year. The opposition, and many of her former political allies, blame Ms. Rousseff for a series of disastrous economic policies that exacerbated the impact of the commodity crash.

Vice-President Michel Temer is poised to take power if the Senate agrees in the coming days to open an impeachment trial, forcing Ms. Rousseff to step aside for 180 days. Mr. Temer has promised a “national unity government” in which he would maintain all the existing social programs but also implement a fiscal austerity package to revive the economy. Ms. Rousseff derided that plan on Tuesday, without mentioning her vice-president by name.

“They’re selling real estate on the moon,” she said.

She also refused to speak the name of lower house Speaker Eduardo Cunha, a former ally who has been the chief architect of the impeachment process, but she described it as ironic that she is being tried by someone who “is better qualified to be a defendant, not a judge. … [He] is being investigated for corruption, for having bank accounts abroad, for money laundering and other issues.” He wanted members of her party to vote to stop a house ethics committee investigation into his activities, and they wouldn’t, and his campaign of “vengeance” began at that moment, she said.

The President chose to begin her interaction with the foreign press with a 25-minute discourse on the technical aspects of financial exchange between federal bodies and state banks. It was a reminder that she is not a politician by nature (she had never held elected office before she ran for president) but rather an economist and technocrat who blizzarded colleagues with data when she ran state companies and ministries.

IT’S NOT EASY for outsiders to sort through all the competing claims about Brazil’s political crisis and the ongoing effort to oust its president, Dilma Rousseff, who won re-election a mere 18 months ago with 54 million votes. But the most important means for understanding the truly anti-democratic nature of what’s taking place is to look at the person whom Brazilian oligarchs and their media organs are trying to install as president: the corruption-tainted, deeply unpopular, oligarch-serving Vice President Michel Temer (above). Doing so shines a bright light on what’s really going on, and why the world should be deeply disturbed.

The New York Times’s Brazil bureau chief, Simon Romero, interviewed Temer this week, and this is how his excellent article begins:

RIO DE JANEIRO — One recent poll found that only 2 percent of Brazilians would vote for him. He is under scrutiny over testimony linking him to a colossal graft scandal. And a high court justice ruled that Congress should consider impeachment proceedings against him.

Michel Temer, Brazil’s vice president, is preparing to take the helm of Brazil next month if the Senate decides to put President Dilma Rousseff on trial.

How can anyone rational believe that anti-corruption anger is driving the elite effort to remove Dilma when they are now installing someone as president who is accused of corruption far more serious than she is? It’s an obvious farce. But there’s something even worse.

House Speaker Eduardo Cunha. Photo: Dida Sampaio/Estadao via APThe person who is third in line to the presidency, right behind Temer, has been exposed as shamelessly corrupt: the evangelical zealot and House speaker Eduardo Cunha. He’s the one who spearheaded the impeachment proceedings even though he got caught last year squirreling away millions of dollars in bribes in Swiss bank accounts, after having lied to Congress when falsely denying that he had any accounts in foreign banks. When Romero asked Temer about his posture toward Cunha once he takes power, this is how Temer responded:
Mr. Temer defended himself and top allies who are under a cloud of accusations in the scheme. He expressed support for Eduardo Cunha, the scandal-plagued speaker of the lower house who is leading the impeachment effort in Congress, saying he would not ask Mr. Cunha to resign. Mr. Cunha will be the next in line for the presidency if Mr. Temer takes over.

By itself, this demonstrates the massive scam taking place here. As my partner, David Miranda, wrote this morning in his Guardian op-ed: “It has now become clear that corruption is not the cause of the effort to oust Brazil’s twice-elected president; rather, corruption is merely the pretext.” In response, Brazil’s media elites will claim (as Temer did) that once Dilma is impeached, then the other corrupt politicians will most certainly be held accountable, but they know this is false, and Temer’s shocking support for Cunha makes that clear. Indeed, press reports show that Temer is planning to install as attorney general — the key government contact for the corruption investigation — a politician specifically urged for that position by Cunha. As Miranda’s op-ed explains, “The real plan behind Rousseff’s impeachment is to put an end to the ongoing investigation, thus protecting corruption, not punishing it.”

But there’s one more vital motive driving all of this. Look at who is going to take over Brazil’s economy and finances once Dilma’s election victory is nullified. Two weeks ago, Reuters reported that Temer’s leading choice to run the central bank is the chair of Goldman Sachs in Brazil, Paulo Leme. Today, Reuters reported that “Murilo Portugal, the head of Brazil’s most powerful banking industry lobby” — and a long-time IMF official — “has emerged as a strong candidate to become finance minister if Temer takes power.” Temer also vowed that he would embrace austerity for Brazil’s already-suffering population: He “intends to downsize the government” and “slash spending.”

In an earning calls last Friday with JP Morgan, the celebratory CEO of Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior SA, Rubens Amaral, explicitly described Dilma’s impeachment as “one of the first steps to normalization in Brazil,” and said that if Temer’s new government implements the “structural reforms” that the financial community desires, then “definitely there will be opportunities.” News of Temer’s preferred appointees strongly suggests Mr. Amaral — and his fellow plutocrats — will be pleased.

Meanwhile, the dominant Brazilian media organs of Globo, Abril (Veja), Estadão — which Miranda’s op-ed discusses at length — are virtually unified in support of impeachment, as in No Dissent Allowed, and have been inciting the street protests from the start. Why is that revealing? Reporters Without Borders just yesterday released its 2016 Press Freedom Rankings, and ranked Brazil 103 in the world because of violence against journalists but also because of this key fact: “Media ownership continues to be very concentrated, especially in the hands of big industrial families that are often close to the political class.” Is it not crystal clear what’s going on here?

So to summarize: Brazilian financial and media elites are pretending that corruption is the reason for removing the twice-elected president of the country as they conspire to install and empower the country’s most corrupted political figures. Brazilian oligarchs will have succeeded in removing from power a moderately left-wing government that won four straight elections in the name of representing the country’s poor, and are literally handing control over the Brazilian economy (the world’s seventh largest) to Goldman Sachs and bank industry lobbyists.

Never in modern political history has it been so easy to “abolish the people” and simply erase 54 million votes cast in a free and fair presidential election.

Forget about hanging chads, as in Florida 2000. This is a day that will live in infamy all across the Global South – when what was one of its most dynamic democracies veered into a plutocratic regime, under a flimsy parliamentary/judicial veneer, with legal and constitutional guarantees now at the mercy of lowly comprador elites.

After the proverbial marathon, the Brazilian Senate voted 55-22 to put President Dilma Rousseff on trial for “crimes of responsibility” – related to alleged window dressing of the government’s budget.

This is the culmination of a drawn-out process that started even before Rousseff won re-election in late 2014 with over 54 million votes. I have described the bunch of perpetrators of what Brazilian creativity has termed ‘golpeachment’ (a mix of coup – “golpe” in Portuguese – and impeachment) as Hybrid War hyenas.

Sophisticated golpeachment – supported by what amounts to an Electoral Inquisition College – has propelled Hybrid War to whole new levels.

Hybrid War as applied to Brazil exhibited classic elements of a color revolution. Of course there was no need for no-fly zones or humanitarian imperialism to “protect human rights” – not to mention provoking a civil war. But considering the high resistance level of the victim state, where civil society is very dynamic, Hybrid War designers in this case bet on a mix of capitulation – and betrayal – of local elites, mixed with “peaceful protests” and a relentless mainstream media campaign. Call it ‘Civil War Light.’

That carried with it a fabulous cost-benefit ratio. Now the (immensely corrupt) Brazilian political system and the current executive/legislative/judiciary/mainstream media alignment can be used by the usual suspects for their geopolitical agenda.

Welcome to regime change light – politics, in a nutshell – as war by other means on the BRICS. A new software, a new operating system. Carrying a pathetic corollary; if the US is the Empire of Chaos, Brazil has now gloriously reached the status of Sub-Empire of Scoundrels.

Scoundrels galore

Rousseff may be accused of serious economic mismanagement, and of being incapable of political articulation among the shark pool that is (immensely corrupt) Brazilian politics. But she is not corrupt. She made a serious mistake in fighting inflation, allowing interest rates to rise to an unsustainable level; so demand in Brazil dramatically dropped, and recession became the norm. She is the (convenient) scapegoat for Brazil’s recession.

She certainly may be blamed for not having a Plan B to fight the global recession. Brazil essentially works on two pillars; commodity exports and local companies relying on the teats of the state. Infrastructure in general is dismal – adding to what is described as the “Brazilian cost” of doing business. With the commodity slump, state funds dwindled and everything was paralyzed – credit, investment, consumption.

The pretext for Rousseff’s impeachment – allegedly transferring loans from public banks to the Treasury in order to disguise the size of Brazil’s fiscal deficit – is flimsy at best. Every administration in the West does it – and that includes Clinton’s, Bush’s and Obama’s.

The Operation Car Wash investigation, dragging on for two years now, was supposed to uncover corruption in the Brazilian political system – as in the collusion of oil giant Petrobras executives, Brazilian construction companies, and political campaign financing. Car Wash has nothing to do with the golpeachment drive. Yet these have been two parallel highways converging to one destination: the criminalization of the Workers’ Party, and the definitive – if possible – political assassination of Rousseff and her mentor, former President Lula.

When golpeachment reached the lower house of Congress – an appalling spectacle – Rousseff was eviscerated by Hybrid War hyenas of the BBC variety; “BBC,” in English, stands for “bullet,”“bible” and “cattle,” where “bullet” refers to the weapons and private security industry, “bible” to pastors and evangelical fanatics, and “cattle” to the powerful agribusiness lobby.

The “BBC” hyenas are members of almost all Brazilian political parties, paperboys for major corporations, and – last but not least – corruption stalwarts. They all benefited from millionaire political campaigning. The whole Car Wash investigation ultimately revolves around campaign financing, which in Brazil, unlike the US with its legalized lobbies, is a Tarantino-worthy Wild West.

The Brazilian Senate is not exactly an “upper” – as in more polished – house. Eighty percent of members are white men – in a country where miscegenation rules. A staggering 58 percent is under criminal investigation – linked to Car Wash. Sixty percent hail from political dynasties. And 13 percent – as alternates – were not elected at all. Among those favoring impeachment, 30 out of 49 are in trouble with the law. Charges include mostly money laundering, financial crimes and outright corruption. Renan Calheiros, the president of the Senate – who oversaw today’s impeachment vote – is the target of no fewer than nine separate money laundering/corruption Car Wash lines of investigation, plus another two criminal probes.

Meet the three Banana Republic amigos

Rousseff is now suspended for a maximum 180 days while a Senate committee decides whether to impeach her for good. Enter President-in-Waiting Michel Temer – a dodgy, shady operator – who has been branded a “usurper” by Rousseff. And usurper this provincial Brutus certainly is – according to his own words. On March 30 last year, he was tweeting that,“Impeachment is unthinkable, it would create an institutional crisis. There is no judicial or political basis for it.”

His administration is born with the original sin of being illegal and massively unpopular; his approval rating floats between an epic 1 percent and 2 percent. He was already fined last week for violating campaign finance limits. And, predictably, he’s drowning in a corruption swamp – named in two Car Wash plea bargains and accused of being part of an illegal scheme of ethanol buying; he may become ineligible for the next eight years. Almost 60 percent of Brazilians also want him impeached – on the same charges leveled against Rousseff.

Brutus 1 (Temer) would not bask in the glow of his 15 minutes of fame without the shenanigans of Brutus 2 (Brazil’s number one crook, former speaker of the lower house Eduardo Cunha, facing charges of bribery and perjury, holder of illegal Swiss accounts, and now finally sidelined by the Supreme Court). It was Brutus 2 who fast-tracked impeachment as pure vengeance; the Workers’ Party did not cover his back as he was facing a tsunami of corruption charges. Brutus 2 used all his vast powers – he runs a campaign financing scam inside Congress – to obstruct the Car Wash investigation. His replacement, the interim speaker, is also under investigation for bribery.

So meet Temer, Cunha, Calheiros; these three amigos are the true stars of the Banana Republic of Scoundrels/Crooks.

As if the Supreme Court would be rascal-free. Judge Gilmar Mendes, for instance, is a lowly plutocrat vassal. When an attorney for the government entered a motion to suspend impeachment, he quipped, “Ah, they can go to heaven, to the Pope, or to hell.” Another pompous judge received a request to sideline Cunha as early as December 2015. He only examined the request over four months later, when the whole golpeachment scam was in its decisive phase. And still he argued, “there’s no proof Cunha contaminated the impeachment process.”

Finally, complementing the whole scam, we find Brazilian mainstream media, with the toxic Globo media empire – which lavishly profited from the 1964 military coup – at the forefront.

All hail the neoliberal restoration

Wall Street – as well as the City of London – could not hide its excitement with golpeachment, believing Brutus 1 Temer will be an economic upgrade. Arguably, he might dare to tweak Brazil’s Kafkaesque tax code and do something about the enormous hole in the pension system. But what that mythical entity – the “markets” – and myriad “investors” are salivating about is the prospect of fabulous rates of return in a reopened-for-speculation Brazil. The Brutus 1 game will be a neoliberal feast, actually a restoration, with no popular representation whatsoever.

The golpeachment gang gets really incensed when they are identified as coup plotters. Still, they could not give a damn about the OAS, Mercosur, Unasur – all of them condemned the coup – not to mention the Holy Grail: the BRICS. Under Brutus 1, the Foreign Ministry, to be led by a sore loser senator, is bound to sink Brazil’s key role in BRICS cooperation, to the benefit of Exceptionalistan.

All one needs to know is that neither Nobel Peace Prize-winner Barack “kill list” Obama nor Queen of Chaos Hillary “We came, we saw, he died” Clinton condemned the ongoing regime change light/golpeachment. That’s predictable, considering Exceptionalistan’sNSA spied on Petrobras and Dilma Rousseff personally – the genesis of what would develop as the Car Wash investigation.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest limited himself to the proverbial platitudes: “challenging moment”; “trust in Brazilian democratic institutions”; or even “mature democracy.” Yet he added, significantly, that Brazil is “under scrutiny.”

Of course, the current stage of a very sophisticated Hybrid War strategy has been accomplished. But there are countless cliffhangers ahead. The Car Wash investigation – currently in slow motion – will pick up speed as a rash of dodgy plea bargains is already in store to create the conditions to criminalize for good not only Dilma Rousseff but the key piece in the chessboard: Lula.

Game over? Not so fast. The anti-golpeachment front does have a strategy: to imprint especially in “deep Brazil,” the vast masses of the working poor, the notion of illegality; to rebuild Rousseff’s image as the victim of a profound injustice; to re-energize the progressive political front; to make sure the Brutus 1 government will fail; and to create the conditions for the man who will come in from the cold to win the 2018 presidential elections.

BRAZIL TODAY AWOKE to stunning news of secret, genuinely shocking conversations involving a key minister in Brazil’s newly installed government, which shine a bright light on the actual motives and participants driving the impeachment of the country’s democratically elected president, Dilma Rousseff. The transcripts were published by the country’s largest newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, and reveal secret conversations that took place in March, just weeks before the impeachment vote in the lower house was held. They show explicit plotting between the new planning minister (then-senator), Romero Jucá, and former oil executive Sergio Machado — both of whom are formal targets of the “Car Wash” corruption investigation — as they agree that removing Dilma is the only means for ending the corruption investigation. The conversations also include discussions of the important role played in Dilma’s removal by the most powerful national institutions, including — most importantly — Brazil’s military leaders.

The transcripts are filled with profoundly incriminating statements about the real goals of impeachment and who was behind it. The crux of this plot is what Jucá calls “a national pact” — involving all of Brazil’s most powerful institutions — to leave Michel Temer in place as president (notwithstanding his multiple corruption scandals) and to kill the corruption investigation once Dilma is removed. In the words of Folha, Jucá made clear that impeachment will “end the pressure from the media and other sectors to continue the Car Wash investigation.” Jucá is the leader of Temer’s PMDB party and one of the “interim president’s” three closest confidants.

It is unclear who is responsible for recording and leaking the 75-minute conversation, but Folha reports that the files are currently in the hand of the prosecutor general. The next few hours and days will likely see new revelations that will shed additional light on the implications and meaning of these transcripts.

The transcripts contain two extraordinary revelations that should lead all media outlets to seriously consider whether they should call what took place in Brazil a “coup”: a term Dilma and her supporters have used for months. When discussing the plot to remove Dilma as a means of ending the Car Wash investigation, Jucá said the Brazilian military is supporting the plot: “I am talking to the generals, the military commanders. They are fine with this, they said they will guarantee it.” He also said the military is “monitoring the Landless Workers Movement” (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST), the social movement of rural workers that supports PT’s efforts of land reform and inequality reduction and has led the protests against impeachment.

The second blockbuster revelation — perhaps even more significant — is Jucá’s statement that he spoke with and secured the involvement of numerous justices on Brazil’s Supreme Court, the institution that impeachment defenders have repeatedly pointed to as vesting the process with legitimacy in order to deny that Dilma’s removal is a coup. Jucá claimed that “there are only a small number” of Court justices to whom he had not obtained access (the only justice he said he ultimately could not get to is Teori Zavascki, who was appointed by Dilma and who — notably — Jucá viewed as incorruptible in obtaining his help to kill the investigation (a central irony of impeachment is that Dilma has protected the Car Wash investigation from interference by those who want to impeach her)). The transcripts also show him saying that “the press wants to take her [Dilma] out,” so “this * will never stop” — meaning the corruption investigations — until she’s gone.

The transcripts provide proof for virtually every suspicion and accusation impeachment opponents have long expressed about those plotting to remove Dilma from office. For months, supporters of Brazil’s democracy have made two arguments about the attempt to remove the country’s democratically elected president: (1) the core purpose of Dilma’s impeachment is not to stop corruption or punish lawbreaking, but rather the exact opposite: to protect the actual thieves by empowering them with Dilma’s exit, thus enabling them to kill the Car Wash investigation; and (2) the impeachment advocates (led by the country’s oligarchical media) have zero interest in clean government, but only in seizing power that they could never obtain democratically, in order to impose a right-wing, oligarch-serving agenda that the Brazilian population would never accept.

Brazil's interim President Michel Temer during a meeting with unionists at the Planalto Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil, on May 16, 2016. Photo: Andre Dusek/Estadao Conteudo. (Agencia Estado via AP Images) Photo: Andre Dusek/APThe first two weeks of Temer’s newly installed government provided abundant evidence for both of these claims. He appointed multiple ministers directly implicated in corruption scandals. A key ally in the lower house who will lead his government’s coalition there — André Moura — is one of the most corrupt politicians in the country, the target of multiple, active criminal probes not only for corruption but also attempted homicide. Temer himself is deeply enmeshed in corruption (he faces an eight-year ban on running for any office) and is rushing to implement a series of radical right-wing changes that Brazilians would never democratically allow, including measures, as The Guardian detailed, “to soften the definition of slavery, roll back the demarcation of indigenous land, trim housebuilding programs and sell off state assets in airports, utilities and the post office.”
But, unlike the events of the last two weeks, these transcripts are not merely clues or signs. They are proof: proof that the prime forces behind the removal of the president understood that taking her out was the only way to save themselves and shield their own extreme corruption from accountability; proof that Brazil’s military, its dominant media outlets, and its Supreme Court were colluding in secret to ensure the removal of the democratically elected president; proof that the perpetrators of impeachment viewed Dilma’s continued presence in Brasilia as the guarantor that the Car Wash investigations would continue; proof that this had nothing to do with preserving Brazilian democracy and everything to do with destroying it.

For his part, Jucá admits that these transcripts are authentic but insists it was all just a misunderstanding with his comments taken out of context, calling it “banal.” “That conversation is not about a pact for Car Wash. It’s about the economy, to extricate Brazil from the crisis,” he claimed in an interview this morning with UOL political blogger Fernando Rodrigues. That explanation is entirely implausible given what he actually said, as well as the explicitly conspiratorial nature of the conversations, in which Jucá insists on a series of one-on-one encounters, rather than meeting in a group, all to avoid provoking suspicions. Political leaders are already calling for his resignation from the government.

Ever since Temer’s installation as president, Brazil has seen intense, and growing, protests against him. Brazilian media outlets — which have been desperately trying to glorify him — have suspiciously refrained from publishing polling data for many weeks, but the last polls show him with only 2 percent support and 60 percent wanting him impeached. The only recent published polling data showed that 66 percent of Brazilians believe legislators voted for impeachment only out of self-interest — a belief these transcripts validate — while only 23 percent believe they did so for the good of the country. Last night in São Paulo, police were forced to barricade the street where Temer’s house is located due to thousands of protesters heading there; they eventually used fire hoses and tear gas. An announcement to close the Ministry of Culture led to artists and others occupying offices around the country in protest, which forced Temer to reverse the decision.

Until now, The Intercept, like most international media outlets, has refrained from using the word “coup” even as it (along with most outlets) has been deeply critical of Dilma’s removal as anti-democratic. These transcripts compel a re-examination of that editorial decision, particularly if no evidence emerges calling into question either the most reasonable meaning of Jucá’s statements or his level of knowledge. This newly revealed plotting is exactly what a coup looks, sounds, and smells like: securing the cooperation of the military and most powerful institutions to remove a democratically elected leader for self-interested, corrupt, and lawless motives, in order to then impose an oligarch-serving agenda that the population despises.

If Dilma’s impeachment remains inevitable, as many believe, these transcripts will make it much more difficult to leave Temer in place. Recent polling data shows that 62 percent of Brazilians want new elections to select their president. That option — the democratic one — is the one Brazil’s elites fear most, because they are petrified (with good reason) that Lula or another candidate they dislike (Marina Silva) will win. But that’s the point: If what is being avoided and smashed in Brazil is democracy, then it’s time to start using the proper language to describe this. These transcripts make it increasingly difficult for media outlets to avoid doing so.

What happened in Brazil is just the most horrifying and flagrant illegal foreign-led parliamentary coup that has happened in Latin America since a similar coup, also foreign-led, deposed José Mujica of Uruguay in June 2009.

Why foreign-led?

Washington was behind it then – and Washington is behind the coup in Brazil today.

What amazes me most though is that the so-called ‘progressive’ media do hardly mention the long and bloody hand of Washington in this coup. This reality is conveniently left out.

Just a year ago, international legal authorities were clear about the unlawfulness and baselessness of impeachment. They all saw the illegitimacy of launching an impeachment procedure.

Nevertheless – the local ultra-corrupt and ultra-neo-Nazi oligarchy succeeded – with the help of the US. What the so-called ‘progressive media’ tell us today, is that a group of corrupt right-wing parliamentarians, led by Eduardo Cunha, former speaker of Brazil’s lower house, who is himself prosecuted for corruption in the so-called “Car-Wash” scandal, drove the move to impeachment. Cunha was – maybe still is – a client of Washington. Not only the mainstream but also the ‘progressive media’ shun this fact. Cunha is accused of perjury, money laundering and receipt of at least $5m in bribes.

The former Vice-President and now President, Michel Temer, who has alleged crimes of high corruption on his shoulders -in excess of US$ 40million – is likely to escape criminal prosecution, and so is his pal Cunha – under Temer’s new leadership.

Dilma was never accused of corruption. They would have liked to, but couldn’t find anything. All they could find is that she may have ‘embellished’ government accounts, a common habit, done throughout the world, no criminal offense and especially no impeachable offense. However, some media still say she was found guilty of corruption. What a lie! – She wasn’t even accused of corruption.

So the real criminals are escaping justice and stay in power. That’s precisely what Washington wants; free access to all the countries riches, hydrocarbons, tropical forests – and not least, almost endless resources of fresh surface water in the Amazon Basin and huge underground water reserves. Let’s not even talk about the countless quantities of Brazil’s mineral resources.

Privatization on a massive scale is what will take place in the coming two years – perhaps comparable to Greece, or what Macri is proposing for Argentina, or worse. Temer has already said so. This may include privatization of all kinds of public assets, the Amazon waters, as the US has already once attempted to put them under UN auspices – so that Washington could control them, as they do with whatever is linked to the UN system. Lula at that time has said firmly NO WAY.

Privatization will be accompanied by equally massive austerity programs, cutting of health and education benefits, of pensions and other social safety nets – leaving behind masses of unemployed people, abject misery – one just has to look at IMF-ECB-EU/EC devastated Greece; and at what Washington-directed Macri has already done to Argentina, i.e. increased the countries poverty level from about 12% in November 2015, before his ‘election’, to close to 40% in July 2016, with soaring unemployment. Temer has two years to complete his neonazi manifesto. And he will get all the help he needs from Washington and the financial institutions that will soon call the shots in Brazil – IMF, World Bank, Wall Street, all of them the extended fist of the FED, US Treasury and the secretive Rothschild controlled BIS (Bank for International Settlement) in Basel, Switzerland – also called the central bank of central banks.

Why is Washington and its financial institutions behind the coup? – Already more than a year ago secret talks between the IMF, WB and the current coup-makers have taken place. Brazil is going to be handed over first to the IMF, which makes sure that the austerity programs are implemented – à la Greece – then to Wall Street which will make sure that the debt level is so that privatization of public assets is “justified and unavoidable”. The newly Temer appointed head of Brazil’s Central Bank, ‎Ilan Goldfajn, who also has a history with the IMF, will make sure that Brazil follows the financial oligarchy’s prescribed line.

By controlling Brazil, Washington has its claws again firmly on Latin America, almost as if the renowned Latin America democratic revolutions towards independence never took place.

And thirdly, also a key for sub-doing Brazil is that Brazil is an important member of the BRICS – crucial for its economic strength and potential as well as for its geographic equilibrium it will bring to the BRICS. The BRICS are led by Russia and China – countries which have already largely detached their economies from the western dollar-based system, and are developing their own, linked to economic output and to gold – yes, gold. Both Russia’s and China’s currencies are gold backed. While the western fiat money is made of thin air.

In the western world, it’s the fake dollar-euro based monetary system that makes the economy, it’s not the economy that makes the monetary system, as it should be, since the economy should serve as the base for any monetary system that is supposed to reflect a healthy, honest, and fair economy within and between countries. That is what the BRICS would promote. Therefore, the BRICS have to be eliminated – one by one. They are a danger for the US-led western financial hegemony over the world.

With foreign intervention proven in the coup, the case could even be taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague – perhaps as a test case to see how independent the ICC still is.......'

'....What Ms. Rousseff will do next – I have no idea. In any case she has already declared that she will take the case to Brazil’s Supreme Court. How successful this will be, is questionable. Especially since Mr. Temer now is clearly a US puppet, at the command of Washington. He will direct Brazil’s Supreme Court to follows orders from above.

Where I see a better chance is taking the case to The Hague. Even though it is well known how dependent on the White House’s wishes the ICC is, it would be interesting to see the arguments the Court uses to uphold Brazil’s Senate verdict. – In any case the world at large might learn something about (in)justice imposed on the ‘unaligned’ by the empire and their masters, the masters of globalized finance.

Whatever Dilma decides to do, however she decides to proceed, I hope she will not give in, that she stays the course, her course of integrity for which she is known and that she stays in politics. Brazil needs her. My guess is that she would have massive, but I mean massive, like in tens of millions of people’s support throughout Brazil, perhaps enough to bring about a revolution; to send a firm message to her Latin American neighbors – and to the rest of the world.'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

Now the corrupt US-backed coupsters are gunning for Lula, who has a very credible chance of winning an election in Brazil.
The crooks behind the 'soft' coup are creating havoc among the poor of Brazil, freezing education finance for ten years, increasing age of retirement, cost of contributions towards it, and the like.In order to get a full pension, one would have to start paying in at 16 years old, and keep paying till retirement at 65. Many don't live that long; average life expectancy in 2014 was 74 for men and 78 for women; with the increasing pressures on workers due to Neo-Liberal financial policies, workers are losing their jobs and houses, basics are rising in price, so those average life spans are likely to drop for the poor.
Anyhow, I went to a solidarity meeting tonight, with some excellent speakers, and one of them asked us to spread the following video far and wide:
'Geoffrey Robertson, Advogado Esp. Direitos Humanos: Lula entrou com uma petição na ONU. InfoDigit-PC':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfqN7U4eJsY

It's only three minutes, but don't worry about the Portuguese title; the speaker is Geoffrey Robertson, speaking in English._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

It's being widely reported that Lula could soon be jailed after the supreme court denied a request to allow him to remain free while appealing against a 12-year conviction for trumped-up corruption charges. But Lula and the millions who support him have pledged to continue to fight for the democratic right for the people of Brazil to determine their own future.
This is how you can help show your solidarity at this vital time:
Join over 1000 others in signing our #StandWithLula statement here
Spread the word by sharing our facebook status here, retweeing us here & Chris Williamson MP here
Become a friend of Brazil & supporter of campaigning work for democracy in Brazil here
Make a one-off donation here of £25 or what you can afford so we can carry on working with MPs, trade unions & others to raise awareness of Lula's fight
Attend the upcoming event at SOAS on the Lula case with Geoffrey Robertson on April 12 at 6pm (details below) - register at http://bit.ly/RSVPSOASLULA.
Best wishes and thanks for your support,
The No Coup in Brazil team

* Geoffrey Robertson Q.C.
Human Rights barrister, academic, author and broadcaster. Founder and joint head of Doughy Street Chambers. Serves as a Master of the Bench at the Middle Temple, a recorder, and visiting professor at Queen Mary University of London.
Geoffrey Robertson Q.C. has played a crucial role in highlighting the use of the judiciary against former president Lula, and has been counsel in many landmark cases in constitutional, criminal and media law in the courts of Britain and the commonwealth and he makes frequent appearances in the Privy Council and the European Court of Human Rights.

* Professor Alfredo Saad Filho
Professor of Political Economy at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Alfredo is Brazilian, an expert on the political economy of neoliberalism, development, industrial policy, and Latin American political and economic development, about which he has written extensively. He has worked in universities and research institutes in Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mozambique, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

'...So it was a very narrow decision by the Supreme Court. But even so it looked as if it was going to go in Lula's favor. And then the night before, the night before the decision, the commander of the Brazilian Armed Forces tweeted out that he expected the Supreme Court to rule against impunity and that the military was very conscious of its institutional role. These tweets were read over the air by Brazil's most popular anchorman on its most popular news show the night before the Supreme Court ruling. And it was interpreted widely as a threat by the military. And this threat was exacerbated by comments of other military generals who said that if Lula was allowed to run for president the military would have to step in and guarantee order and prevent it from happening, which is tantamount to saying military coup.
And so what most analysts who looking at yesterday's events believe is that Rosa Weber, who in her decision she said she was going against her personal beliefs and siding with the majority, that she felt threatened. That she reacted to the military threat and changed her decision to go against Lula....'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

Read the words of the newly-'elected' Brazilian President._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

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